“Eve. Eve.”
He went over to her and took her hand. She lifted her face to his. “If you hadn’t kept me waiting——” He got no further.
There was a pause.
“I was thinking the same,” she said; “and yet——”
“And yet?” he questioned.
She drew Kay nearer to her. “Where’s the good of talking. We’ve talked so often—so often.”
He went to the open window and stared out. A butterfly flew in and alighted on his forehead. He took no notice; he stood rigid like a man of stone. A little muscle in his cheek kept twitching; his arms hung straight down and the fingers worked against the palms of his hands. Seen on either side of him, in two narrow strips, was the basking unimprisoned country, which rolled on marvelously, this visible landscape building into the next, and the next into all the others that lay beyond the horizon, continents, seas and wonderlands, like a carpet of ever-changing pattern wrapped about the world for his feet to tread. And he, without bonds, was a prisoner.
He swung round. To Peter’s surprise he was laughing. His dark face was narrow in mockery. “Come on, young ‘un,” he said; “let’s get out.”
He had to double himself up to pass down the low-ceilinged stairway. Peter followed; in leaving the room, he glanced back. The golden woman had raised her eyes—the eyes of a child who has been selfish and has wounded itself. She was fondling Kay, as though she thought that her kindness to the little girl would atone for her unkindness to the man.
As he crossed the living-room, the Faun Man picked up the mandolin from the chair. He did not walk through the garden; he walked into it. That was his way with everything. Leaving the path, he pressed waist-deep through roses and fuchsias, scattering their blooms and petals. Like soldiers approving his lawlessness, sunflowers swayed their golden heads and nodded. Swarms of winged insects, whose homes he had disturbed, rose up in busy protest. His face was wrinkled with determination to be glad—to be glad whatever might lie in the future. In the heart of the fragrant nature-world he halted, and sat down on the hard-baked earth. He looked like a great supple hound with his legs crouched under him. Through the walls of their house of leaves and blossoms they could see the window of the room they had left.